Abu Sultan’s Enterprise for Human Trafficking and Money Laundering

According to a source close to Abu Sultan and a document issued by the Egyptian authorities, Abu Sultan owns olive farms in Tobruk - one in the Krom al-Kheil area, a second on the road to Taslih, and the third in the Najmat al-Khalij neighbourhood. Abu Sultan uses these farms as a cover for human trafficking, housing migrants there when they first arrive, before they are sent on to Europe. Abu Sultan forces these migrants to work on his farms without pay. They are then moved to the Bab al-Zaytun area east of Tobruk, prior to boarding boats.

When we travelled to Bab al-Zaytun, we discovered several places where migrants were being held. And from the coordinates we had of these locations, it turned out they were only a ten to twenty minute drive from Abu Sultan's mansion.

Libyan “criminal investigation” forces had previously raided a farm in Bab al-Zaytun and seized migrants there who were being prepared for illegal migration.

Major General Ibrahim al-Shehabi, head of the Tobruk branch of the Anti-Illegal Immigration Agency, said in June 2023 that around 4,000 Egyptians had been apprehended in warehouses used by smugglers in the transporting of migrants to Italy.

A month before this, Kamel Hamida and his companions had arrived in Libya. He was kept at one of Abu Sultan's olive farms and the family received a call from one of Abu Sultan's collaborators in Tobruk, asking them to pay 140,000 Egyptian pounds (then equivalent to about $4,600) to one of his middlemen to allow him to go to Europe illegally.

Kamel was allowed to speak to his mother on the same call. She asked him to come home, but he told her: “I can't come back. If I do, they'll kill me. You’ve got to pay the money.” His grandmother, Hamida Kamel, says, “Anyone in our position would’ve done the same. We had to pay or he’d have died.”

Two sons of Eid Abdulsalam, a farmer from Sharqia, made the same journey as that of Kamel Hamid.

One of them managed to reach Italy, but the other was lost at sea. Eid tells us, "My son Ibrahim was seventeen. Young people who have left here (from Mashtoul al-Souq) have done so against their parents' wishes... He went because of pressure from his friends and from Abu Sultan. That was the guy’s name. He had a page on the internet and people listened to him. I heard that his name was Mohamed Abu Sultan.. all we knew was his name on the internet. But he’d send his agents to collect money. We paid him 140,400 Egyptian pounds; the agent took it by hand. But we don't know who he was.”

Kamel Hamida, Ibrahim Eid, and dozens of other would-be migrants we met, or whose families we spoke to, all had one thing in common: they all left Egypt on a temporary free ticket from Abu Sultan, but only until they reached Libya.

Abu Sultan set up his network with a “smart” system that provides free transport for the largest number of people seeking work on his farms in Libya. But once they reach Tobruk, their families are pressured into paying for their illegal passage to Europe. This mechanism has brought Abu Sultan huge profits – both from the money families are forced to pay, and what he makes from the migrants themselves, who he compels to work on his farms without pay.

Eid Abdulsalam, whose two young sons emigrated, says: “Some kids went to Libya and told us smugglers mistreated them there, not allowing them proper food and sleep.” He says they did this to pressure families into paying the money they demanded.

A UNHCR report has shown that migrants in Libya have been subjected to torture and arbitrary detention by traffickers. Video footage posted on Facebook by the Libyan Attorney General's Office and human rights reports have also shed light on the harsh situations many migrants face in eastern Libya. They are kept in inhumane conditions, and suffer systematic torture until the bill for their onward passage is paid in full to the intermediaries and agents.

A Cluster of Cells

The agents and middlemen that Abu Sultan uses are organized in a remarkably hierarchical structure, which has enabled him to work covertly in human smuggling since 2017. Ibrahim Soliman, the vegetable trader, ranks higher than Abu Sultan’s agents, but lower than the network leader himself. As such, he was a suitable intermediary between Abu Sultan and his agents in Egypt and Libya, ensuring the success of the “cell structure” he set up.

According to a memorandum issued by the General Administration for Combating Illegal Immigration at the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior, Abu Sultan had been managing his network since 2017 as a cluster of “cells” each of which has a specific role. Each cell is given specific assignments by middlemen from different governorates, and the ones down in the hierarchy do not know those at the top, and are in only contact with a specific group in Libya.

Investigations by the Egyptian public prosecutor has shown that the leadership of Abu Sultan's cell operates from Libya and runs a network of traffickers remotely in most of Egypt's governorates. The Abu Sultan network launders the funds it collects from migrants, by channelling this money through agencies selling vegetables or buying property.

On June 9, 2023, the Abu Sultan network managed to send a rickety fishing boat, carrying Kamel Hamida and around 700 to 800 other migrants, from Tobruk to Europe.

Meanwhile, vegetable trader “Ibrahim Soliman” returned to Egypt from Abu Sultan's farm in Tobruk with a specific assignment. He was to collect the money from Abu Sultan's middlemen, based in various Egyptian governorates. He would then reopen the W. Al-Saad fruit and vegetable agency in Sharqia, and a company called “S General Supplies”, and buy up residential units.

Abu Sultan's profits from human trafficking would be carefully collected, then recycled and laundered using different methods. This job was given to both Soliman and “Mohammed Al-Sutouhi”*, 47-year-old egg trader from Sharqia.

In a logbook bearing the name of the “W. Al-Saad Vegetables Agency,” Soliman would enter the names of migrants and the how much their families had paid through a network of agents across Egypt. One of these logs, a copy of which we have seen, lists 146 names and next to each is written 140,000 Egyptian pounds - the amount paid by the migrant for the journey.

As for Al-Sutouhi, the egg trader, he had the more precise job of collecting the money from the agents and logging the date and total amount. Al-Sutouhi had one notebook in which he wrote down what he had collected from the migrants under the title “invoice.”

The money that was earmarked to be sent to Libya was often transferred via the Vodafone Cash app or through a ‘bureau de change’ in Tobruk called “B.A. Exchange,” which Soliman says is owned by Abu Sultan himself. Soliman meanwhile lists Abu Sultan's name on his phone as “Fathallah Restaurant,” perhaps to deflect attention. At the same time Soliman runs a network of agents to collect the migration fees. WhatsApp was the main tool Soliman used to communicate with his agents. It was also the way migrants most often kept in touch with their families.

Soliman would sometimes send instructions to migrants or their families using voice messages on WhatsApp. In one such message, he says, “Get your money ready and communicate only via the internet. I’ll send an agent to collect the money.”

In another message, Soliman writes to one would-be migrant: "I’ll send you a representative. Write me the exact name of the district and village and I’ll send the him to collect the money from you. He’ll get in touch today and let you know Hajj Ahmad says it's okay. Then you can coordinate with him.”

In a message to one of the families reassuring them that their sons had arrived, Soliman wrote, “As soon as they arrive safely, I’ll let you know. I’ll post their names on the [Facebook] page. God willing, they’ll get there on Friday, and I’ll post all their names on Mohamed Mohamed's page."

There are agents scattered across Egypt's governorates from north to south. None of them knew about the boss, “Abu Sultan”. Their job was simply to be on the front line, working with migrants and their families to convince them to leave, and collecting money from them and handing it over to the middlemen. Each agent receives on average five thousand pounds for each person they convince to become an illegal migrant, or for collecting the money.

One of the agents with this limited sort of role is 44-year-old “Abdo Badawi” (a pseudonym), a fisherman from Borg Meghizeal in Metoubes, Kafr El Sheikh Governorate - the Egyptian governorate that accounts for the highest number of illegal migrants. “H.A”, however, was given additional work to do.

On July 5, 2023, the Egyptian authorities arrested M.A. - a jeweller with a shop in the city of Rosetta in Beheira Governorate - along with one of his employees, a seventeen-year-old called F.M. It later transpired that Rosetta was a hub for laundering Abu Sultan's money, with the jewellery shop in the city being used to buy dilapidated fishing boats.

F.M. confessed to the Egyptian public prosecutor that the owner of the jewellery shop had ordered him to take half a million Egyptian pounds (worth about $16,200 at the time) from the shop safe and deliver it to Abdo Badawi, Abu Sultan's agent. Police investigations uncovered the role played by the jewellery shop in transferring and converting money obtained from human trafficking.

Badawi claimed that the 500,000 Egyptian pounds he received from the jewellery shop belonged to his brother-in-law, who works as a fisherman in Libya, and occasionally asks him to give money to his sister. Badawi insists that his role was just to recruit migrants or take money from them. According to the public prosecutor, the Egyptian authorities found 2.6 million Egyptian pounds (then worth around $66,800) in the brother-in-law's home, which had been given to his wife by “agents” who had collected it from migrants.

Badawi adds that his brother-in-law would often ask him to meet people to collect money from them and hand it to his wife. Three weeks before (July 4, 2023), he had asked Badawi to meet someone in Borg Meghizeal who had given him 130,000 Egyptian pounds. He then received 260,000 Egyptian pounds from someone else, followed by another 500,000 Egyptian pounds he was given in Rosetta. e He handed all the money over to his wife.

The department of Egypt’s interior ministry dealing with communications and information technology examined Abdo Badawi's phone. A memo from this department, which was examined by the public prosecutor on August 28, 2023, reported that evidence recovered from the phone, even though Badawi had deleted some data, gave a clearer picture of how Abu Sultan's agents work.

The technical examination of the phone showed deleted photos of a fishing boat carrying migrants, which had been used to promote the network, as well as audio messages discussing the handover of money by migrants to middlemen, contact information for other traffickers, and records of money transfers from migrants using the Vodafone Cash app.

Documents also shed light on the complex financial mechanisms that support the trafficking network. Sometimes migrants pay the middlemen using Vodafone Cash, and at other times the money is delivered by hand in a roll of paper with the migrant's name, address and the amount written on it.

In October 2023, the Egyptian public prosecutor sent 36 members of the Abu Sultan network for trial on charges of money laundering and human trafficking. The backgrounds of the defendants were as varied as the roles they played. They included a vegetable trader, an egg seller, a driver, a lawyer, the owner of a chicken farm, a barber, a chef, and a fisherman.

According to documents submitted by the interior ministry's anti-money laundering department to the public prosecutor, the Abu Sultan network used a particular method to launder money and buy dilapidated fishing boats to smuggle people to Europe.

One of these documents, dated July 22, 2023 and numbered “5 Ahwal,” shows that “A. S. Soliman,” the number two in Abu Sultan's network, was tasked with laundering money taken from would-be migrants by purchasing property and setting up companies.

On January 16, 2020, Soliman opened an agency for selling vegetables and fruit in Sharqia Governorate. Then in January 2022, he established a company called “S. General Supplies” in Giza in his wife's name. The ownership of these properties and companies was subsequently transferred to Egyptians with direct links to the traffickers in Libya.

According to the interior ministry's anti-money laundering department, this has been the pattern since 2017. Commercial agencies and property purchases are used as a back door for human trafficking, concealing or disguising the funds from these operations by severing the link to their illegal source.

The Abu Sultan network was clearly adept at laundering its proceeds through seemingly legitimate commercial establishments: a jewellery shop, a grocery and vegetable store, and a ‘bureau de change’, all of which were linked to Abu Sultan.

This money was also used to buy dilapidated fishing boats in Rosetta, where the jewellery shop is located. One of these boats was the “El-Mutawakel,” which Abu Sultan bought to transport migrants from Tobruk to Italy in June 2023. This is the boat that Kamel Hamida and his companions boarded, along with over 700 other migrants of various nationalities, and which sank off the Greek coast on June 14, 2023. Only 104 of those 700 survived.

After the El-Mutawakel sank, Soliman fled Sharqia and went into hiding in a villa in Alexandria’s Agami neighbourhood. Meanwhile, Abu Sultan instructed him to use part of the proceeds from the ship’s final voyage to purchase property in the same area.

After he was arrested and interrogated, Soliman confessed to the public prosecutor that he had bought two residential units for Abu Sultan in Agami on June 23, just eight days after the sinking of the El-Mutawakel. He said that Abu Sultan had asked him to do so and to register them temporarily in his own name.

A memo from the interior ministry's anti-money laundering department states that buying property was one type of money laundering operation carried out by the Abu Sultan network. The purpose was to conceal and disguise the nature of this money and divert attention away from its illegal source.

Lawyer Mostafa Kamel El-Terai, who represents clients in money laundering cases in Egypt and the UAE, told us there are numerous forms of money laundering, but that it starts with someone needing to sever the link between themselves and the illicit proceeds of a crime. He points out that in cases of human trafficking, the first stage is to charge the perpetrator with the crime. The next stage is to charge them with laundering the proceeds of the crime. El-Terai explains that money laundering concerns the act itself, not the amount of money involved. Any proceeds of criminal activity, however small, that are used by the accused in a commercial transaction to sever the link between himself and those funds constitute money laundering.